COUP

Backstory

I joined COUP in mid-2017 to lead the iOS team.

COUP is the first direct to consumer mobility venture from BOSCH. It’s like ZipCar, Car2Go or DriveNow but with electric scooters exclusively from Gogoro. The minimum viable product was implemented by BCG Digital Ventures and was launched in Berlin in 2016. The company now operates fleets in Paris, Madrid and Tübingen as well.

In the first few months of my employment, I redefined a number of key aspects of the company’s software development workflow, implemented features to support fleet expansion and analysed the performance of the app in the field while preparing for the next chapter of development. The crash rate and customer support call rate were both high, memory leaks and smashers were plentiful and the pace of feature development was glacial due to certain architecture choices.

In the first half of 2018, I led the architecture and development of a “core” SDK that would become the foundation for multiple iOS applications (a Rider app for external users and a Fleet Operations app for internal use) followed by a complete rewrite of the Rider application which led to an improvement in our App Store rating (now 4.7 stars, up from 3.2), increased sense of ownership and team spirit.